@icculus Mate, the *only* thing I have interest in valuing or celebrating is labour and the enrichment people get from the effort they put into their creations and the world around them.

When I see a chair someone's built from scraps, that's got different meaning to a chair made by someone who milled their own lumber, and getting a mass produced machine-assembled chair means something different again. If seating were scarce, the calculus might be different, but I have more chairs than backsides

@icculus for me, the most beautiful thing about software are the moments when by reading code I learn something about the author.

Whether it's a beautifully simple solution to a complex problem, a very wise handling of a hard-to-anticipate edge case, an ugly hack, or a frustrating compromise - it tells a story of a human who cared.

And IMO that's worth more than a mountain of code nobody has looked at.

@icculus was reverse engineering a game on and off for the past few years. Not sure I’ll keep going, since there’s already a (slop, depending on your definition) port. Was thinking I’d still do it for fun, but feel kind of ambivalent about that now.

@icculus You made SDL.
And so many games and other applications make use of it because it is so genuinely powerful. To me, that is much, much more impressive. And I am not ready to believe that I am the only one who thinks that way.

@icculus If a reply is welcome

What I honestly think has changed

Is that doing things "because it's impressive" is over. "I got X technology working on Y old system!" and everyone's impressed by your programming chops. No longer a point. Impressing people can be automated.

So what matters to me now

Is making things, that the people I care about, will benefit from, and enjoy

And the people I care about most

Are the people who don't want to use software/play games written by LLMs

@icculus
I doubt that the code the LLM threw up is as maintainable as yours.